Final Rating: 4/5
It is often said of certain people that they were born at the wrong time. It could be because their attitudes or outlooks don’t fit with what else is commonplace in society. Or it could be because they weren’t understood or respected and as times change they would be appreciated. Jackie Shane is the exact person who would not only be appreciated, but would absolutely thrive in today’s landscape.
Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story, directed by Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee, tells the story of the trailblazing trans R&B singer who on the cusp of massive mainstream success walked away from the music industry in 1971 to live a life of solitude.
The film opens with an animation sequence showing an older woman putting a record on and dancing to it. The album in question is the 1967 record Jackie Shane Live, and when the music kicks in we are transported to the concert that provided the source material as people narrate what they believe happened to Shane after she left her public life. People thought she was murdered or died in some horrific manner. But the reality was the exact opposite. She retired from both music and leaving her house to the point where no one from her past knew where she went.
The film introduces Vonnie Crawford-Moore and Andrenee Majors-Douglas, from Nashville, two women who are contacted as next of kin and inheritors after their aunt passed away. Except neither of them had ever heard of their aunt Jackie Shane. The film takes the backdrop of them learning about their aunt through her personal belongings. They sort through her fabulous clothing and jewelry, paintings of herself, photos that span her whole life and most importantly a handwritten autobiography.
Between the autobiography and a series of phone call interviews conducted by the filmmakers before Shane’s death in 2019, we see who Jackie Shane was and her impact on music. The film uses rotoscope animation done in watercolours to retell her story. Using both Makayla Walker as the younger version and Sandra Caldwell as the older version, two trans performers, we get to experience Shane’s life.
Walker plays Shane as she goes from singing in churches to being a fledgling Blues backing drummer and singer before being hired to sing lead in a R&B band put together by Frank Motley. We follow her as her band joins a traveling circus and when it leaves the US to play shows in Canada, Shane realizes that she’d much rather live in that country. She is quoted as saying “you can’t choose where you are born, but you can choose what you call home”, with the new home in question being Toronto, Ontario.
From her early friendship with Little Richard, another flamboyant performer who was likely inspired more from “Little” Jackie Shane than anyone else to playing in mafia controlled clubs, Shane lived her life the way she wanted and not caring if she got society’s approval. She turned down performing on The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand because the shows, while hugely popular and would have most definitely made her a lot of money, either segregated its live studio audience or didn’t let coloured people in at all. They also wouldn’t let her perform unless she presented fully as male, something the flashy suits, plenty of makeup and wigs didn’t exactly read as.
The film manages to get footage of the only videotaped performance from Shane in the form of a 1965 episode of Night Train, a Nashville area show that showcased black performers in a American Bandstand like format.
The movie shows not only the immediate success she had on the local R&B scenes, specifically her popularity in Toronto and Montreal but also her long term impact she had as a trailblazing trans performer, at a time where being black was hard enough but wanting to live your authentic self as a different gender was completely unacceptable.
The film is a celebration of life in the truest of terms. While it doesn’t gloss over the racism, homophobia and transphobia that Shane experienced in her life, it spends more time highlighting her accomplishments and positive outlook she had in life. In her handwritten autobiography, she preaches that everyone deserves love and understanding, a sentiment that likely would have been looked at quizzically in the 60’s and 70’s, but thankfully celebrated and understood in today’s landscape.
Elliot Page’s production company Pageboy Productions once again brings to light a queer story that highlights the resilience and difficult path so many people have walked to get to where we are today. Jackie Shane continues the trend of people like Beverly Glenn-Copeland, a black trans man who eventually found their greatest success in a modern landscape, decades after their music was originally released and highlighted in their own documentary Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story.
Thankfully Shane was appreciated in her time, but it is still sad to think that the world missed out on so much great music after she retreated from public life in 1971. She was planning a comeback in 2019, one that unfortunately was never fully realized due to her untimely death. At least we still have a few records and this touching documentary to remember her by.
Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story was seen during the 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival. Thanks to the NFB for the screener. Check out our Hot Docs wrap up podcast.
